The stockmarket is on the up and up. The RE market is roaring back with list/sell ratios moving up and MOI down to 5 months and change.
How things have changed! A few months ago, the world was coming to end, banks were in trouble and big companies were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Now the world is a beautiful place.
Except...while the banks are US and European banks are making money on their day to day operations they still have more enormous write downs ahead of them, and big companies like Chrysler and GM are still on the verge of bankruptcy and have their heads kept above water by massive and regular infusions of tax-payer money.
The companies that are still making money are doing so by cutting costs and laying workers off. This is not the stuff of rebounds. It is an interlude in my opinion.
We have driven off a financial cliff and thanks to the enormous and unprecedented intervention of Governments and Central banks across the world, we have a small parachute to cushion the fall. However fall we must.
Nevertheless the mood has shifted slightly more to the positive and that is reflected in increased economic activity. It also helps having a President across the border who is trying to hit the crisis from several angles (which he didn't cause BTW) instead of having a moron who says.."economics was never my strong point".
So we should expect this little stabilisation to continue a little longer, maybe one month or maybe three or four. The same shills who DID NOT see this financial crisis coming will now tell you with a straight face that it is OVER!
There are many of us on the blogsphere who did see this coming- as a result of the excesses. Yes we were early, but as any economist will tell you foretelling the what and the when requires religious capabilities.
And most of us don't think it is over, though are glad that we have this interlude (who wants a total collapse and food lines and street violence- not I).
Another nice post from Matt on the new social trend of frugality:
http://futronomics.blogspot.com/2009/04/against-empirical-analysis.html
Have a good week-end
we have a small parachute to cushion the fall.An alternate view is that the people who matter (the ones who profited handsomely in the creation of the problem!) have a bit of room to save themselves, and a whole bunch of taxpayer money to ease the pain they've already felt.
ReplyDeleteNot my idea, I've just seen a lot of that type of chatter on the blogs.
It seems the whole world is involved in the "its ok to lie as long as you can say you have a greater purpose in mind" shell-game. In this case, individuals, politicians, and interest groups have rationalized not telling the truth by opining that they "must" save the world from a financial crash that would occur if people "panicked" upon the realization of how bad things really are. In other times, the comments by these people would be considered fraud. Banks that are insolvent are "improving and again profitable" even though they are technically bankrupt. As long as you don't count debt, required repayments, assets that have dropped dramatically in value, and massive infusions of public capital (from taxpayers) they seem to be doing ok. Of course, if you or I stopped paying our rent, mortgages, and other bills to prove our financial stability we would quickly be evicted, foreclosed upon, and put in debtors prison. But it "necessary" to commit fraud at the moment for "the greater good", even though millions of people who have been responsible during the boom years ARE being defrauded.
ReplyDeleteAll of this deceit, in the name of the "greater good" really is fraud. They are telling people to invest in corporations that are about to fail and buy homes that will shortly put the owners underwater. It IS illegal to lie about the finances of a publicly traded company no matter what your goal is, in the long term.
Unfortunately, for normal taxpayers, the shoveling of money out of the back of a pickup truck into the waiting hands of the corporate elite will NOT stop the economy from falling. It was, after all, the maintaining of low interest rates to "fight a recession" earlier this decade that blew the unsustainable bubble in housing we are suffering the collapse of now. Does anyone REALLY think more of the same will "fix" it? There will just be another group of people to default in the future and make the situation even worse...
Thanks for the mention, Fish.
ReplyDeleteOnce it becomes common knowledge that "everything is hunky dory again" we'll know that the bounce is over. I'm starting to see the early signs of that - people who don't know anything about investing are calling and asking "which" stocks they should be buying - not "if" they should be buying. Others are still skeptical.
The confidence game plays on...
Good post by Jeff Barkley, btw.
Alexcanuck- it certainly looks that way.
ReplyDeleteJeff- the money-changers are running the temple again!
Matt- this is a typical bear market rally. Explosive, over bought but wont break down, doesn't let anyone get in. Then when everyone has got complacent- it delivers the coup de gras.
The fact that we are not down several hundred on the flu news just shows you the market will drop when it wants to..no doubt there will some 'event' to explain it at the time.